Want to know how to do online reputation repair on your own? Here is a list of the top ten reputation tips you can use as a basis for your reputation management strategy provided by your friends at Internet Reputation Management. This is a highly simplified generic version of the kind of reputation management we do - but designed for do-it-yourselfers.

1. Google Alerts

Set up a Google Alert for your key phrases here. Set it to check as-it-happens. You'll get an email every time someone adds your key phrases somewhere. If you think you'll get too many alerts, add quotes around the keyword like this "Internet Reputation Management".

2. Social Media Profiles

Set up social media profiles on these sites:

Facebook (make sure you get a vanity URL with your key phrase in it, for example Facebook.com/keyphrase. How do you get a Facebook vanity URL? Go to Facebook.com/username. You can only do it once, so make sure you get it right.

4. Websites

Put a website behind each domain (also via GoDaddy) and place your keyphrase in the website Title. The Title bar is what you see at the top of the web browser. Putting key phrases in the Title area helps search engines to easily discern what the website is about.

5. A Blog

Go to Wordpress.org - Get a free Wordpress site at keyphrase.wordpress.com. Write a blog post about every two weeks. It's a good idea to set a recurring appointment in your calendar to remind you. Online reputation repair is about consistency, and the latest Google updates like Penguin tell us that consistently refreshing content with relevant well-written text and images really helps. In a time-crunch? A few lines will do, try to insure your key phrase is somewhere in the text you write and post. Why not set up fifty blogs? Answer: Because you must keep them updated. That's a lot of typing.

6. Additional Content

By now you should have at least ten new types of content, but more won't hurt. You probably have a few websites at GoDaddy, a blog at Wordpress, a few profiles in social media like Facebook and LinkedIn.com. You've made sure the Title of each web page has your key phrase in it - for example: "Internet Reputation Management" would be our key phrase since it's the name of our company. You can take additional steps by creating a press release.

7. Anchor Text / Linking

When you've finished building your content, place links in the copy of your content to a few of the other sites you created. Search engines will follow these links. You don't need to link from every document to every other document. Just put three or four links in the text of the profiles, blogs, press release, etc. The links should be named with your key phrase. For example, if your key phrase were "Reputation X" then the link might be structured like this: "I think that Reputation X is the best reputation management company out there." Notice how the words Internet Reputation Management are actually a link to our site. Search engines will follow this link and say "Aha! Here is a link, and its about Internet Reputation Management!".

8. Third Party Links

After you've placed links from one bit of content to a few of the others, you should have your friends do the same. Ask them to build links from their sites to each of yours using the Anchor Text / Linking step above. Their sites should have links to a number of your sites. The more links, the better.

9. Google Local and Yahoo Local.

If your issue is with a business you own, go to Google Local and Yahoo Local (just search those terms) and claim your profile. Fill in the information making certain you use your key phrase occasionally, especially if your key phrase is your company name.

10. Update Content and Build More Links

The more often you update the above sites with new, fresh content, and the more often you build links with the right Anchor Text to your various sites, the better. Eventually you will own most if not all of page one of search results.

Thanks for your time. If you have any questions, or want this program on steroids - massive steroids, call us at Internet Reputation Management.